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This week WWE hosts the 30th edition of SummerSlam, the second biggest pay-per-view after WrestleMania.

One of the most controversial moments in the history of the event came in 1991, when a backstage dispute ended with the Ultimate Warrior leaving WWE.

Who was Ultimate Warrior?

Warrior was a huge star for WWE – then the WWF – in the 1980s and early ’90s (his pumped-up physique was a staple of WWE’s muscleman era).

With his iconic face paint, bonkers promos, thunderous entrance music and rope-shaking antics, Warrior’s popularity was second only to Hulk Hogan.

Warrior – real name Jim Hellwig, until he legally changed it to Warrior in 1993 – would defeat the Hulkster for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania VI. But his run as champ wasn’t the success WWE chairman Vince McMahon had hoped for.

Lumbered with challengers that Warrior or Hogan had already defeated, the new champ did poor at the box office – and struggled to deliver main event-caliber matches.

Warrior eventually lost the title to Sgt. Slaughter at Royal Rumble 1991 – by which time WWE had decided to transition the belt back to Hogan.

What happened at SummerSlam 1991?

Held on Aug. 26 at Madison Square Garden, the event saw Warrior team with old-rival Hogan to face the “Triangle of Terror” – Slaughter, General Adnan and Colonel Mustafa.

Warrior and Hogan were on-screen pals, but things were less than friendly behind the scenes. And tensions were growing not between Warrior and Hogan, but between Warrior and McMahon over money.

Warrior and Hogan won the match, but it would be Warrior’s last appearance in WWE for seven months. Rumors flew around for years about why Warrior had vanished after the event.

WWE eventually revealed the truth (or a version of it) in its 2005 documentary, “The Self-Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior.”

In the documentary, McMahon describes how Warrior demanded more money before SummerSlam – and threatened to no-show the event.

“Ultimate Warrior basically came to me and figuratively held a gun to my head and said, ‘Hey, I’m not going to perform unless you pay me x number of dollars,” McMahon said.

Though Vince was coy about the amount (“I forget how much it was,” he says) Sgt. Slaughter reveals in another doc, “Always Believe,” that it was “$500,000 cash.”

Slaughter also remembers that Hogan wanted to “break his leg,” but Vince wanted to do things by the book, McMahon said. “My responsibility is to present what I have advertised. My responsibility is to the audience. So I reluctantly agreed to Warrior’s demand, knowing what I was going to do as soon as he came out of the ring. It gave me great pleasure to fire him and to let him know why I was doing it.”

That’s not the full story

In January 2014, two letters surfaced online that had been written prior to SummerSlam 1991 – one from Warrior to McMahon, the other a reply from Vince to Warrior.

In Warrior’s letter – handwritten and five pages long – he wrote that he was unhappy with his payoff from WrestleMania VII in April of that year. Warrior considered his match with Randy Savage to be as important to the event as Hogan’s title clash with Slaughter. Warrior demanded several things in his letter: $550,000 for ‘Mania VII, guaranteed days off and equal payoffs for shows and merchandise as Hulk Hogan.

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“Whatever your decision I can and will live with it. Till then I remain home with one who cares [sic],” Warrior wrote.

But the real revelation is that the letter was dated July 10, 1991.

Warrior had indeed demanded half a million dollars and threatened to no-show events until he received it, as McMahon had claimed. But Warrior had in fact made these demands six weeks before SummerSlam. Not only that, but McMahon had agreed to Warrior’s terms, confirming that he’d pay the $550,000 and that Warrior would receive equal pay to Hogan.

“No other WWF athlete will be paid at a higher pay rate than you on pay-per-view events,” McMahon wrote, before ending the letter with, “I regret the turmoil you’ve put yourself though and your agonizing over what you feel is fair compensation. … Furthermore, I would like to express to you my deepest appreciation and admiration for you as a performer, as a member of the WWF family, as a man and as my friend.”

So why did Warrior leave?

Directly after the SummerSlam match – and despite Vince promising to meet his demands – Warrior was served with a suspension notice.

“I came back through the curtain and there was an agent there who said, ‘Vince wants to meet with you,’” Warrior said on the “Always Believe” documentary. “I remember Vince gave me a letter and said it was a suspension letter … they didn’t tell me about that before the match.”

It seemed that McMahon had played ball with Warrior just to ensure that he appeared as advertised at SummerSlam.

Sly Stallone, Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon in 2005.AP

A leaked payroll from the event even confirmed that Warrior was paid equal to Hulk Hogan for the event ($75,000 each – though Hogan nabbed a $15,000 bonus, too).

But McMahon had planned all along to immediately suspend him.

The suspension notice also surfaced online and told a different story to McMahon’s “deepest appreciation and admiration.”

It claimed that after putting “time, money, and sincere energy” into making Warrior a superstar, the fame had gone to his head.

“You have become a legend in your own mind,” McMahon wrote.

He also listed complaints that include no-showing events and being “rude and abusive” to WWE fans.

The bitterest pill for Warrior must have been McMahon’s assertion that Hulk Hogan was a “living legend.”

“[Hulk] is a bigger star and draw at WWF events, is more dependable and is far more revered and respected by WWF fans and by the public at large,” McMahon said.

What happened after that?

Warrior refused the suspension and attempted to give his resignation to WWE – which in turn was refused as Warrior’s contract ran until September 1992.

Warrior finally made his return to save Hulk Hogan from a beatdown at the hands of Sid Justice and Papa Shango at WrestleMania VIII in April ’92.

But he left the company in November after failing a drug test – at a time when WWE was cracking down on steroid use. (British Bulldog left WWE at the same time for this reason.)

Warrior had a brief return at WrestleMania XII in 1996, before no-showing a string of events that he blamed on the death of his father.

But WWE officials knew he’d been estranged from his father for years. Following several lawsuits – over the trademark of his gimmick and the trashing he received in the “Self-Destruction” documentary – Warrior and WWE eventually made up in 2014.

He entered the Hall of Fame and appeared on WrestleMania XXX and then on Raw the next night – stepping foot inside a WWE ring for the first time in 18 years.

“Every man’s heart one day beats its final beat, his lungs breathe their final breath,” Warrior said. “If what that man did in his life makes the blood pulse though the body and makes them believe deeper in something and larger that life, then his essence, his spirit will be immortalized.”

He died of a heart attack the next day – almost immediately after making his peace with WWE and the fans. It was a final bizarre twist from wrestling’s most bizarre character.